


laughter lines

by WillozSummers (SammieRie)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: And so do I, Gen, Julia is touch-starved (and so am I), Quentin loves Julia so so much, also background Wickoff and royal trio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 17:33:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SammieRie/pseuds/WillozSummers
Summary: Quentin had been in love with Julia for as long as he could remember. It was a simple fact of his existence - the sky was blue, the sun would come up in the morning, and Quentin loved Julia. It was just as much a fact of existence that Julia loved Quentin, but Quentin spent most of his life convinced he loved her more.He hadn’t realized how how much he was in love with Julia’s laugh until he thought he might never hear it again.//musings on Q helping Julia find her way back to herself in early s3





	laughter lines

**Author's Note:**

> this wasn't any of the fics I was supposed to be writing, but I had a lot of feelings about Julia going from an incredibly physically affectionate person to being guarded and touch-starved, so here this is. not shippy, but it could be read that way (save for about a paragraph)

Quentin had been in love with Julia for as long as he could remember. It was a simple fact of his existence - the sky was blue, the sun would come up in the morning, and Quentin loved Julia.

It was just as much a fact of existence that Julia loved Quentin, but Quentin spent most of his life convinced he loved her _more_. It wasn’t his fault, really. He’d been raised to see romance as the end-all be-all of love and of life, that the most important person in his life should be his girlfriend and someday his wife. Of course, then, he’d want that person to be Julia. Who else would he build a life with? Who else had he always pictured himself old and grey with?

Being in love with Julia his whole life meant he had a long list of things he loved about her. If you asked Quentin why he loved Julia, you better have time to listen, because there’s no short answer. Everything Julia is, and everything she is to Quentin, can’t be summed up in a few simple words. Quentin could talk your ear off waxing poetic about the wonders of Julia Wicker.

Being in love with Julia his whole life also meant there were parts of her he took for granted. Julia was a constant, like gravity, something that anchored Quentin. He never realized how much her steady presence held him together until he lost her, and spun out into someone he was ashamed of.

Another thing Quentin took for granted? Julia’s laugh. If you asked Quentin to name his favorite things about Julia, he’d tell you about her bravery, always standing up for him when he couldn’t stand up for himself; about her humour, her love of puns and wordplay, her sharp wit that never turned cruel. He’d tell you about her endless curiosity, always questioning, always hungering for more knowledge, more adventure, more experience. When he got to the physical (and he loves her body, he does, but he loves her mind and her heart first and foremost), he’d say his favorite things are her kind eyes and her warm smile, even on her worst days, and how casually physically affectionate she always was.

He lost that about her, too, but it was never something he’d taken for granted. And it was something easily recovered, at least between the two of them. Reunited after everything - after their fight, and Reynard, and Julia losing and gaining back her Shade - Julia was different. She was...distant, dimmed, the light in her eyes and the natural warmth she always used to emit hidden behind a protective layer of clouds. When she laughed, it was small and hollow, an echo of what it once was, and she didn’t casually wrap her arm around friends, was careful not to sit legs pressed against someone on the couch. 

At first, Quentin had been hesitant, hadn’t wanted to breach her bubble of personal space. But he was Quentin, and she was Julia, and she’d never wanted any distance between them, not in all the years she’d known him. She stood behind his chair and rested her hand on his shoulder, a physical connection tethering them together, a connection she barely realized she was making. She threw herself down beside him on the couch after a long day and her body curled against his side on instinct, head resting against his shoulder, smiling when his arm came up to wrap around her.

Kady, sometimes, looked slightly queasy at the sight of them, and Quentin wasn’t sure if it was guilt or jealousy or hurt or what it could be, didn’t know Kady well enough to venture a guess. Eliot’s looks he recognized as jealousy, a funny emotion on him, and one Quentin found laughably misplaced. He was over Julia, had stopped being in love with her when he’d fallen in love with magic, _real_ magic - had fallen for Alice, and Eliot, and was half in love with Margo as well. He knew Eliot would never ask him to change this, though, knew he understood because he had seen Eliot and Margo act the same - the kind of affection that had half the world convinced they were in love.

Quentin ran his fingers through Julia’s hair, rubbed her back, sat close beside her every chance they got. Julia seemed to relax at any touch from him, where she would flinch at others. He gave her the affection she at once craved and feared, and he was more than happy to provide that for her the way she always had for him.

Today was a quiet day, all of them lounging in the living room of the cottage, savoring the downtime from the quest. Quentin was sitting in the window seat, leaned back into the corner, and Julia had her head in his lap, eyes closed but he knew she was still awake. His fingers carded through her hair absently, and when he stopped she nudged her head against his hand, leaning into the touch when he scratched at her scalp in response.

“You’re like a cat,” he said, and she smiled at that, nudging her shoulder against his ribs, eyes still closed. The moment was soft and quiet, Eliot and Margo murmuring to each other intertwined on the couch, until Margo let out a boisterous laugh, a loud guffaw that broke the quiet of the room. He felt Julia flinch at the sudden noise, her whole body tensing for a moment before relaxing back into him, eyes squeezed shut and face pressing against his belly. He stroked his fingers through her hair again, his free hand finding hers to lace their fingers together.

His heart broke at all of it. It was so rare to hear a genuine laugh like that from Margo, and it made him miss the sound of Julia’s laughter. He hadn’t realized how how much he was in love with Julia’s laugh until he thought he might never hear it again. She’d gotten back the warmth of her smile, was regaining the kindly shine of her eyes, but he hadn’t heard her laugh, carefree and genuine, since...since before Brakebills tore them apart. The only thing he could remember that was more than a chuckle was Shadeless Julia laughing in the face of danger, scaring both he and Kady. Or the memories from when she’d visited him after trapping him in a spell, seeming to phase between a sympathetic facade and a vindictive laugh, malicious and cruel and so counter to his Julia that it had only further convinced him he was truly losing his mind.

He couldn’t stand those being his last memories of her laugh. He knew it’d come back someday, but he’d never been a terribly patient person, and he missed her laugh that he’d swear was like the sun. They were both withering without it. He vowed to do everything he could to bring back her life, to bring back his sun. He started telling jokes more often, sometimes funny, sometimes so bad he hoped she’d laugh at that instead. He took every chance for puns and word play, and Eliot seemed fond of the newfound change in Quentin, but he still hadn't heard Julia’s laugh. She’d chuckled a little, small and hidden, only heard because they always stood side by side, and she always smiled at his antics. It wasn’t his goal, but he was still always glad to make Julia smile.

It was about three weeks after Quentin started actively trying to make Julia laugh when he was tripped up by the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. Well, he was tripped up already - that was what had caused it. Todd had misunderstood a warning they’d given him, and somehow his plan to booby trap the cottage involved a whole bunch of actual string hung like some sort of physical laser maze. In trying to maneuver his way through it, Quentin had tripped over one of the seemingly endless strings and, instead of face-planting on the foot of the stairs like he thought he would, he wound up hanging halfway upside down.

He was about to start cursing Todd for using magic to _reinforce the strength of the string_ rather than just _using a magical booby trap in the first place_ when he was cut off by a laugh. _Of course,_ he thought, of course it would be when he was natural and so very _Quentin_ , rather than acting so forced. He twisted his head about, hoping he wouldn’t end up slipping out of this trap, and turned to look at Julia.

“You look - you look totally ridiculous,” she managed to get out between laughs, pulling out her phone to capture the image. He couldn’t even be mad, too distracted by the smile on her face making her eyes crinkle at the corners, and he wanted to take a photo of his own. His hand reached towards his pocket, but that jostled his position, and he ended up slipping between strings, catching again a moment later with his legs twisted at odd angles, even more absurd than before.

Julia had frozen when he slipped, worried he’d come crashing down, but as he hung suspended again, she broke out laughing harder. He looked up at his legs and his laugh joined her, and suddenly they couldn’t stop laughing. They were breathless and silly, Julia doubled over against the banister to catch her breath.

Quentin was hanging nearly upside down, thwarted by a ridiculous string maze, his best friend feet away, laughing like when they were kids, and he realized he was a fool. How could he ever have thought there could be _more_ than _this_?

**Author's Note:**

> find me @ ravenclawjuliawicker to have even more feels about these two, or prompt me about the magicians in general


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